APPENDIX. 207 and to bring themunder the, laws, and officers, and Spirit of Christ, and rule them by heavenly power and love, as his own kingdoms, that he may bring them to perfection in one celestial kingdom at last. And in-this sense we pray, "Thy kingdom come." 4. To make men believe that he is the heavenlyKing sent from God to cast down Satan's kingdom, was the great business of the preaching of the gospel : this he would demonstrate, as by all his miracles which showed him to have the victory of devils, and to be the Lord of life, so also by visible apparition in glory. And it is said (1 John v.1, 8.) that there are three witnesses in heaven and three in earth ; so here Christ would have three heavenly and three earthly witnesses of his transfiguration. From heaven he had the witness, 1. Of a voice, proclaiming, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am Well pleased; hear him." 2. Of Moses, the chief lawgiver. 3. And of Elias, the chief prophet ; to tell us that the law and the prophets are his prognosticating witnesses: but "hear him " notifieth to us, that Christ and his gospel are to be heard above the law and the prophetsy and to teach us more than they could teach us : the law was given by Muses, (with its types and shadows,) but grace and truth (the substance so typified) are by Jesus Christ. 5. Light and glory are often of the same signification. Christ was transfigured into a lucid, glorious appearance of body. He tells us by this, that he would have us have some sort of idea of his kingdom, fetched from sense : many apparitions of angels have been in lights. Christ appeared to Saul in a visible light; ,Acts ix. So did he to John; Rev. i., &c. God and the Lamb are the light of the New Jerusalem. It is an inheritance of the saints in light. Some seem to me to think too basely of sense, and too far to separate it from intellectual spirits, both as topower, act, andobject; and all because they find it in lower creatures. They might ac- cordingly deny substantiality to spirits, because brutes are sub- stances: the higher have all the perfections of the lower, either formally or eminently. It is not a spirit's perfection to be insen- sible, orto have nothing to do with sensible things, hut to be emi- nently sensible, and to be superior agents on lower sensibles. God is love ; and love is complacency ; and a high degree of com- placency is delight or joy. So that God is essential, infinite joy, but without that drossy quality which is proper to, souls in flesh, and all that imperfection which belongs to creatures. Can we tell what it is to enter into our Master's joy, or joyfully to love and praise him, without any_ sense ? I rather think, that as vigorous youth makes men capable ofmore delight than decrepit, languid, painful age and 'sickness, so heaven shall, IV perfecting our na-
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